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Tracy and Max

Tracy talks about her job as a paramedic and Max, the therapy dog who works with her.

“I’ve been a paramedic for 26 years and have had some pretty horrific calls, some of which have caused me distress. But I haven’t had PTSD so far. I think one of the reasons is that I have always come home to a pet. You can’t lock yourself alone in a room when you have a dog. Part of my mental health is because I have always had a support animal.”

“Max was nine weeks old when I picked him up. I took him away from a litter of five sisters and four brothers, and there was no whining. He was an intelligent, curious, confident puppy. I turned on the radio and he watched me carefully. He watched me roll down the window. If he heard a noise outside, he would look. I knew pretty much on the drive home that he was special.”

“Before I got him, I hadn’t thought of having a therapy dog. When I got home I said to my husband, ‘I’ve never done therapy dog work, but this dog should be doing that.’ ”

“Therapy dogs have to pass a tough series of tests. They are tested for fear of loud noises. A crowd of people with walkers, canes and wheelchairs will come towards the dog at the same time. Examiners are looking at temperament. If there’s any fear or aggression, they automatically fail. They put food on a chair and you have to walk by it a couple of times. The dog can’t try to eat it. At no time can you pull on his leash.”

“A therapy dog has to be more than friendly. A friendly dog can be afraid of buses, not like to be in crowds or not like men as much as women. A friendly dog will take the cookie off the plate. For a therapy dog, it’s a combination of obedience, temperament and personality.”

What’s Max’s average day like?

“We start the morning with briefing at headquarters, where there are between 20 and 25 people. I keep Max on the leash if someone in the room doesn’t like dogs or is allergic. If not, I ask permission to have him off the leash, and Max works the room. He walks around the room and says hi to everyone. He has some favourites. One medic brings him a banana every morning, another brings him a pretty nice size milk bone and another girl gives him rice cakes. The people that have food are his favourites. If people favour Max, he favours them back.”

“After the morning debrief we head to the garage. While I do my check, he lies by the car and garage staff, equipment control people and janitors come over to say hi. Max has a relationship with almost everyone. Then we head out. Mostly I respond to calls like other paramedics. He’s in a clip-in system in the car. When we get a call it takes 20 seconds to clip him in, and away we go. During the day if there is no call, I may stop at the emergency department where he’s got quite a following among the nurses, doctors, and clerks.”

“If a paramedic has had a tough call, say a child suicide, they can ask for peer support. We have a peer support team with about 20 members who are available 24/7. In addition, if the paramedics want, they can ask for Max.”

“While the paramedics do their paperwork after the call, Max goes in the room, and chills with them. Or they can play with Max. They can have as much time as they want with him. It’s usually 30 to 45 minutes. Then they are ready to talk with one of the peer support workers, and Max and I go back on the road.”

“We’ve had two deaths in the paramedicine service this year. When that happened, Max and I were off the road for two days seeing people as they came in and out at the hospitals and the bases. We have some leeway to react to situations as they come up.”

“I have been here a long time and people used to tell me about calls that were tough. Now I get very little of that. When I see the medics it’s always about Max. It’s interesting how Max has actually protected me from vicarious trauma. When I hear about those calls I obviously I have empathy, but I am usually not directly involved.”

Does Max get holidays?

“Oh God, yeah! One day he didn’t want to come in. Usually he is happy to go to work, but I’d agreed to exchange a shift, so it was an extra day of work.”

“I Got His Vest Out Of The Cupboard And He Just Lay On The Living Room Floor Looking At Me. I Was Like, You Coming? And He’s Like, No. I Left Him At Home. Apparently Max Does Not Do Shift Exchanges!”

Is he a different dog when he doesn’t have the vest on?

“Absolutely. He is more puppyish when the vest comes off. When he is at home he is a dog. He will get into the garbage and chew my brush. At work he is, I would say, more sophisticated. He is like, ‘I’m at work, so I am going to behave this way.’ ”

“No one really knew about PTSD for paramedics back when I started. There was a culture that you tried not to get connected to your patients. You separated yourself emotionally. There was a hardness. ‘You knew what you were getting into. Suck it up, buttercup.’ ”

“There was definitely no support. It didn’t matter what call you did, you were going back out on the road. No one ever went home or got help. We didn’t talk about anything. Now we are starting to realize that there is compassion fatigue.”

“Our peer support workers have had extensive training, as have our superintendents to recognize stress and concerning changes in behaviour. Max is definitely part of that peer support.”

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This document is provided under the terms of a CreativeCommons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license. The terms of the license are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. Attributions are to be made to HealthyDebate.ca, a project under the direction of Dr. Andreas Laupacis, at the Keenan Research Centre, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital.